Thursday, November 05, 2009

Cartoonists, Lumberjacks and Middle Meddlers: Chainsaws 3

What a modern day lumberjack would be like. But let's go back in time, shall we?

Now George Liquor has a natural talent for cutting down trees. In fact, some say he was born with a chainsaw in his mouth. He has been chopping down trees every day since he was a wee lad. And boy, was his Ol' Man proud.He has even won the medal of freedom for his great contribution to the depletion of our essential resources.

And in free moments, when he finds himself without a chainsaw in his hands, he studies the history and techniques of the great lumberjack heroes that inspired him. So should we let him get to the job God put him on this earth for and let him take down a couple of His precious rainforests in a day or 2? No sir, this is the 21st Century and we don't do things that way anymore. We are much more scientific now. We still wanna take down the rainforests, but we need to do it with the aid of inexperienced experts who can do it sloppily in a much longer period and at 50 times the cost.

No pinkies that wrote these instructions have ever been tainted by the roughness of bark.Those who can't do surely must make the rules, because after all, they are not prejudiced by old-school practical experience. They obtain their immense knowledge in the abstract, through market research.Well no one can say ol' George ain't the sporting type.He's willing to give the new cumbersome ways a shot.My gosh, what a mess we have to clean up! But that's how we do things in our modern world.Moral of the story:

Today we spread the decisions. It's only fair to all the people who do not have the blessings of a natural ability at something.

I think this one's a lot funnier than the first lumberjack story.It's an enigma that so much power is apparently given to people who have no real connection to the animation - scratch that, the creative industry. Isn't studio animation the only kind of institution where that happens?I'd rather go independent like Bill Plympton - he exerts complete and utter creative control over his work.I lament the way the studio system seems to be going and there is a reason I never really wanted to be a part of it...

Thank you john! What a way to start a day!I especially liked the research room drawing. It's an exact depiction of how it was studying animation at the Danish design school. It wasn’t' even expected of us to draw anything?

The main reason this is funny is because it is absolutely true. The world has many of the folks who seek to rule and regulate. Good 'ole George, the all-American cannot be defeated by a middle meddler.It would be a hoot if George handed his chainsaw to the meddler and said "show me how to do this."Come visit.

I hear you man. There's gotta be a way around this system. It's not like it only applies to cartoons, or even just creativity and entertainment. The wrong people are doing all the wrong jobs everywhere since forever.

Wouldn't it be great if the competition came from trying to make the most enjoyable and pleasing product? Instead of all the effort going into convincing people it's a good product?!

It's sad how much of what you wrote applies to ALL businesses... instead of putting people at the top who actually know how the business runs and what each department does, we get people who went to business school. These people don't know JACK about how things actually work in the company, but hey, they have a degree in BUSINESS, so we should pay them a lot of money to make our jobs harder to do. siiiiigh.

This is getting more and more hilarious. Last night I was reading this adventure to my girlfriend, and laughing as I read.Hey John, I've been practicing your lessons and I'm getting more confident with construction. So I've decided to make an attempt on Kaspar, but I'm not so happy with the result. Is it too much to ask if you can check it and tell me what is not really working in the construction? My main concern is with the hands and eyes, so maybe you can help me to figure out what's wrong.Here is my Kaspar.

Great drawings... the compositions of the first few (Baby George/crib, yard w/ Dad & George, and George cutting trees) are illustrations of all the various cartoon principles you've put on the blog,,... especially composition and hierarchy.

After cutting down all those trees, does George have a dream he's in the rainforest, sitting in a big cauldron of boiling water, surrounded by cannibals?